


Mostly Ghostly

by Callie_Girl



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghost Hunters, Ghost Hunters, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Secret Santa, Sympathetic Anxiety | Virgil Sanders, Sympathetic Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders, Sympathetic Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders, Sympathetic Dark Sides (Sanders Sides), Sympathetic Deceit | Janus Sanders, Sympathetic Light Sides (Sanders Sides), Sympathetic Logic | Logan Sanders, Sympathetic Morality | Patton Sanders, YouTube, logan is a demon, remus dee and virgil are ghosts, shhhh, urbex au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:47:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28114128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callie_Girl/pseuds/Callie_Girl
Summary: Roman had been begging Logan and Patton to do a video at the Kerr City Sunken House, and they finally relented.The ghosts of the previous inhabitants, Remus, Janus, and Virgil, are not happy.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13





	Mostly Ghostly

The sun was beginning to dip beneath the horizon, stars poking through the purple sky. The air was hot and sticky as it normally was in the middle of a Florida spring. It was eerily still, not even the slightest wind. If there were any birds or bugs, they were minding their own business. It was, for lack of a better word, eerie.

It was the kind of environment Patton and Logan Pradesh worked best in.

They’d gotten to the house fifteen minutes ago, about a minute after Roman Bloom had come. Logan didn’t like doing videos in the dark (horror movie 101,) but Roman insisted that it added to the aesthetic and Patton agreed.

At the moment, Logan was pacing, brown eyes darting around. Roman was double-checking the camera battery, then started recording, pointing the camera at Patton.

Patton Pradesh glanced up from tying his boots to see Roman pointing the camera at him, excitement plastered all over his copper face. “Oh, are we rolling?”

“You bet, padre.” Roman was excited for this one- he’d been begging them to make a video in the Kerr City sunken house for ages. They’d recently gotten permission from the person who owned the property (but who had never so much as set foot on the grounds) to make a video, and Roman had run around the block twice in his excitement.

“Oh- hey there, guys gals and nonbinary pals! It’s Patton-”

“And Logan-” Logan interjected from where he was triple-checking that the car was locked.

“And today we’re at Kerr City, more specifically at the famous sunken house of Kerr City! Logan, do you mind giving us some background on this petrifying place?”

Logan nodded, straightening his glasses. “Shortly after the mysterious deaths of its three inhabitants, Janus, Virgil, and Remus, the house is reported to have sunk into the ground. This is worthy of note because the house was not built on an unstable foundation, so it is unknown why the ground swallowed it.” He moved over a bit, allowing Roman to get a shot of where the roof of the house stuck out of the ground. “We are at the house now and as you can see, it is buried completely except for the topmost level. We’ll be entering through a window that leads to the room of Janus Truman. Who knows, we may even encounter one of the previous residents.” They would, Logan could feel it. Something not quite human was watching them.

“Let’s go!” Patton covered the camera lens. Roman switched it off and Patton grabbed the ghost hunting equipment. Logan could sense the presence of spirits in the house, three, but he couldn’t get a good read on them until they were inside. They didn’t feel hostile, though, so he nodded to Patton, and they went inside.

The second they were inside, a cold wind drifted past them. The spirit was there, not showing himself. Roman turned on the camera.

“We just experienced a cold wind- I wish we had caught it on camera,” Logan said, eyes darting around the room. Finally, he saw it- the spirit was only visible in the corner of his eyes, a tall figure in a cloak that hid their features. Logan pretended not to see, instead examining the room- a bed sat on the opposite wall, the quilt still vibrant, facing the window, surrounded by an army of bookshelves stuffed with philosophy and psychology books, and an old dresser. This place was unusually free of graffiti and damaged glass- even the mirror on the vanity was untouched.

“Who are you?” The figure whispered. Patton and Roman startled. 

“Did you hear that?” Patton glanced back at the camera. They didn’t normally get encounters this early in the video. It had, counting this time, happened twice- and the other time was a demon.

That didn’t bode well.

“‘Who are you?’” Roman quoted, biting his lip and looking around. “Should we break out the spirit box?”

Logan shook his head. “We should explore the rest of the house so any spirits see us, and to make sure there are no people here.”

The cloaked figure melted into the wall. 

Interesting.

“This place is startlingly clean,” Logan picked up a pair of reading glasses on the bedside table, which were set down like the wearer had merely stepped out for a carton of milk. “No graffiti, no broken glass- I wonder.” He strode over to the ancient wardrobe and pulled it open. It gave after a few good tugs, wood warped and swelled by humid Florida summers. The clothing inside was left as it would have been when the last inhabitants lived there- Jeans and nice shirts hanging in a row, a few pairs of shoes, drawers full of casual shirts, pyjamas, and undergarments. There was a drawer of jewellery, watches and rings. A jacket was stuffed down at the bottom. Gloves and a few hats sat on the top shelf. Two extra canes leaned against the side.

This was… unsettling. Too well preserved.

Logan decided to come back and read the assortment of notebooks and journals in the desk later and led Patton and Roman down the stairs. There was a study, two bedrooms, and a bathroom, the latter that they did not go into. Movie posters, books, clothes, a hoodie- Normally the places they went felt ancient, but this place felt so modern it felt like breaking into someone’s home when they had just stepped out for a moment. They even found costume equipment. A dark figure lurked in the edges of their vision, always disappearing when they looked directly at them. They heard the occasional whisper.

And, finally, the bottom floor. A kitchen, dishes still in the dishwasher, a family room, flat-screen television left where it stood, remote laying in front of it, and a dining room, silverware left in front of three chairs, placemats set out, ready for another meal.

“This is eerie,” Patton whispered, which summed up how Logan felt about it pretty well. The sun had finally set below the horizon, so they set up the spirit box.

“If there is anyone who would like to speak with us,” Patton half-shouted, talking over the skipping static of the spirit box, “You can speak to us through this box thing here.”

In the groups three years urban-exploring, they had never gotten an instant response.

Until that night.

“Who-” A man’s voice, as clear as one could get on a spirit box, made them all startle. The cloaked spirit was standing behind Patton. At that angle, Logan could see the lower half of its face- sharp cheekbones, pointed chin, eczema patch covering the left half of its face.

“Who are we?” Patton guessed. “I’m Patton Pradesh, that’s my brother, Logan Pradesh, and our incredible cameraman, Roman Bloom. We’re from the youtube channel Mostly Ghostly. Who are we speaking to?”

“Jan-”

“Virgil-”

“Remus-”

The other two had joined the cloaked man, a crouched-down moustached man with a vitiligo patch that made a streak of his hair white and a thin, nervous-looking man with dark shadows under his eyes. They stuck close to the cloaked man, eyes darting between the intruders.

“How did you die?”

“Car-” The thin man tensed in frustration. Spirit boxes were wicked useful, but maddeningly useless at the same time. It was hard for spirits to get entire sentences out unless they were very powerful- or demons.

“Car crash?” Patton guessed. Of course, they already knew that, they’d done their research, but they wanted to go through the formalities

The ghosts did not want to go through the formalities.

“Leave.” The moustachioed man snapped, large eyes narrow. A vase flew across the room and shattered against the wall. The cloaked man smacked the moustached one on the back of the head.

“Happy-” stuttered the box. The thin man growled and stamped his feet in frustration. “Here.”

“You are happy here?” Logan asked. That one was unusual- spirits normally wanted to move on and hated being tied to the mortal realm. Then again, the angry spirits were normally the ones whose haunts- forgive the pun- were completely trashed.

“Yes.” The cloaked man- Janus, Logan remembered, Janus had eczema- pulled the other two close. They wanted to be left alone.

They tried a few more questions, but the spirits tired of it and stopped answering. The Ouija Board had similar results- the spirits answered their questions at first, then lost interest- and two plates were shattered against the wall when the moustached man got frustrated.

“Patton,” Logan said after a few hours. “I think we should leave before they start throwing things at us.”

“Yes,” Janus whispered. He was shifting his weight from one foot to the other, and Logan could feel the eldest ghosts eyes on him. 

“Leave,” Moustache growled. The other one nodded, eyes flashing.

Logan nodded. “They want us to leave.”

The house shook slightly, a warning, and that was the end of that discussion.

With a few departing words to the spirits, the three went back up to the topmost floor and left.

Logan let Patton deal with the out-tro to the video, checking the car for damage or serial killers in the backseat, then climbing into the passenger seat. Roman left in his car first, he would meet them back at the house the three men shared, and Patton put the equipment in the back and slid into the driver’s seat. “Whaddya think, Lo? Should we come back here?”

“Maybe in a few years.” Eventually, he figured, the spirits would want to move to the next realm, and he didn’t want them to turn into evil spirits. “Right now, I think we should just let them be.”

“Were they upset?” Patton glanced over. Logan was more closely connected to the spirit world, the only one of the three who could (for the most part) see spirits.

“A bit.” The three weren’t welcomed by others in life, so it only made sense that they wanted to be left alone in death. “They were… eager for us to leave.”

“Yeah, I got that,” Patton laughed, absently picking a shard of porcelain from his black curls. The last plate had hit a little too close to home for Logan. But if the ghosts had wanted to hurt them, they’d had ample time to do it. They’d just really wanted to be left alone.

Logan kind of regretted leaving early, he’d wanted to learn more about what the spirits were like in life, but his companions were not as durable as he was. He’d read the journals when they came back. There was no doubt that the three would protect their home from vandals. And they’d closed the window behind them.

They (they being Roman and Patton, because Logan didn’t do that stuff) stopped by Remy and Emile Picani’s place to get cleansed quickly (even Logan could miss a curse or evil spirits clinging to them,) and went home, ate a quick midnight snack, then got ready for bed. They would start editing in the morning.

Logan was curled up on the couch, watching Patton stay up even later to answer fan mail, occasionally listening to little snippets of what their fans said and trying to ignore the residual feeling he got from being close to a place of worship for too long. He waited until Patton had answered most of the gargantuan pile of letters and packages, then made him go to bed. Once Patton was gone, he answered the rest of the fanmail, autographed a few pictures, recorded a quick reaction video to the gifts he’d been sent, then went up to his room.

He didn’t bother pulling down the attic stairs, he was too drained, so he just floated up through the ceiling. His room had been renovated from the attic (they didn’t have a basement, or Logan would’ve chosen that, so he stuck with the attic) and was surprisingly cosy, an inviting bed with a quilt Patton had made especially for his brother laid out over the soft mattress. Logan just wanted to collapse into it, but he drifted over to the mirror first.

And shifted into his true form.

He didn’t look like a stereotypical demon- no horns, no goat legs- but his skin turned sallow and his veins stood out, his eyes turned entirely coal-black. Keeping the human guise (more for the viewers than for his housemates, Patton and Roman already knew he was a demon) was exhausting, and if he rested in it, it would feel like he had never gotten any sleep at all.

Once he’d done that, he floated into bed and went to sleep.


End file.
